The Temperature of Skin
by sinemoras09
Summary: Rick gets stranded on an alien planet with his 4 year-old daughter. AU. Gen. Pre-series. No spoilers.


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"Daddy!"

He heard Beth screaming, the sound of ray guns shooting through the air.

Rick lurched forward, then threw himself over her as the explosion rocked the garage. Gromflomites landed around them but Rick grabbed a ray gun from his holster, shooting them.

"Beth!" Rick grabbed the little girl and threw her over his shoulder, running as they kept shooting.

The little girl wailed. Rick threw open the door of his spaceship and threw her inside.

"Daddy!"

Thrusters fired, the sudden burst of flame incinerating the Gromflomites below them. The ship vaulted upwards, spiraling violently.

"Fuck!" Rick said, and he yanked the steering wheel back. "Sweetie, hold on!"

He threw the ship into a nosedive, the Federation cruisers following in close pursuit, before yanking the ship upwards. Evasive maneuvers. The Gromflomites kept shooting. The ship shuddered violently as they kept taking fire

"Daddy!" Beth screamed in the backseat. Something exploded just outside. "Daddy! Daddy!"

"Sweetie hold on!"

He flipped a switch, the reactor core rising to warp speed, and the ship disappeared with a burst of concentrated dark matter.

xXx

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The stars around them were quiet. Rick's heart, which was thudding in his chest, slowed, and soon enough he was aware of his daughter sniffing and swallowing ragged breaths in the back.

"Sweetie?" Rick turned. "Sweetie, a-a-are you okay?"

"Yeah." Beth hiccuped. Her face was blotchy and her nose was red.

"I-I'm sorry, sweetie. I-I know that was really scary."

The little girl hiccuped, her little eyes watering.

He didn't have his portal gun. It happened so fast, Rick barely had time to react.

A thought wormed its way to the front of his consciousness. _Oh God I hope they don't get Diane..._

He pushed it down. Beth was crying in the back seat. It was too late. He couldn't go back.

"Fuck," Rick said, under his breath.

"Mommy said you shouldn't say bad words," she said.

xXx

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They landed on a backwater planet just outside Federation jurisdiction. He was low on fuel, and he wasn't sure he could whip up more concentrated dark matter, let alone a makeshift portal gun or even portal fluid. He got out and surveyed the damage, frowning at the exposed circuits from torn off panels, pieces of the ship charred and ripped off during the crossfire. Behind him, little Beth was wrapped up in his lab coat, the sleeves rolled up around her skinny arms and the excess length trailing behind her like a train.

"O-okay, sweetie. We're just, we're just gonna stay here tonight. Just for tonight."

"Is Mommy coming?" Her little voice was muffled by the lapels of his lab coat.

"No, sweetie. Mommy's not..." Shit. "...Mommy's not coming."

It was getting dark. Earlier he had scanned for dangerous lifeforms, which thankfully there were none, but they had no food and there was a growing chill in the air.

He had his flask and a half-empty thing of Tic Tacs. He swore under his breath. Diane's car would be stockpiled with snacks.

"Daddy I'm hungry," Beth said. Rick squatted on his haunches, motioning for her to sit next to him.

"Here, sweetie. I-i-it's a Tic Tac, try some, they're good," he said.

Beth took the small capsule and made a face. "I'm still hungry, Daddy."

"I-I know, sweetie. Daddy needs to, needs to look for food."

Rick stood up, looking around.

He had a DNA compiler in the back, which by some miracle was still largely intact. He could theoretically try to hunt some alien meat down, or else scrounge around the local flora for edible roots or fruit. But it was getting dark, and he didn't want to drag Beth into the woods.

He took out his gun, then took a tissue sample from his arm.

"Daddy, what are you doing?" Beth peeked around the spaceship. Rick grunted.

"I-I-I'm making us dinner, sweetie." Fuck. "It'll be just a second."

The compiler whirred. Rick halted the cloning process before the cells could differentiate further, stopping it at the point where it was only a clump of semi-gelatinous tissue.

_This is gross,_ Rick thought, and then, _it's just proteins, what the fuck._ Diane breastfed her when she was a baby, this was basically the same thing.

"Sweetie, here. I-I got some steak. Let's go start a fire."

xXx

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Beth was asleep, curled up in the backseat of the spaceship, Rick's lab coat draped over her like a makeshift blanket.

Rick sat in the pilot's seat and worked on encrypting a distress beacon. They were a few lightyears away from Bird Planet, and there was a chance someone friendly would intercept. _Bird Person you fuck, you better answer this_. The computer beeped, the distress signal pulsing outward.

Was Diane okay? Rick itched to call her on the space phone, but there was a chance the Gromflomites had it tapped.

He leaned back in the pilot's seat, exhausted and closing his eyes.

xXx

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There was something squirming under his arm. Rick blinked awake to find little Beth trying to worm her way against his chest, the lab coat half-dragged out from the back. "Daddy I'm cold," Beth said, and wordlessly Rick pulled her into his lap, draping the lab coat over her. She burrowed into his armpit, wrapping her little arms around him.

Fucking Gromflomites. Fucking Federation. Rick stared out into the stars and at the thin pulses of light emitted from the distress beacon. He rested his hand on top of her head, then stroked her hair, quietly.

Daybreak. Rick had fallen asleep with Beth curled up against his chest, squished up on the pilot's seat and the lab coat half-falling off the both of them. The sun rose, and a shaft of yellow light filtered into the ship. The cockpit was cool except for the places where the sun had touched it, and the pilot's seat where they were sleeping had warmed to the temperature of skin.

"Daddy?"

Rick jerked awake. Little Beth was leaning up on his chest. "Daddy. I need to pee, Daddy."

"Shit. O-okay." Rick sat up, wincing a bit. His body had been contorted uncomfortably in the pilot's seat for the better part of the night.

There was still no response from the distress beacon. Rick cursed and shoved open the door.

"O-okay, sweetie. There's no bathrooms here, so you just...you just gotta pick a spot and go somewhere."

Beth held her arms.

"Daddy I don't wanna pee outside."

"Well you got to, sweetie. There's no bathrooms here." Rick looked around. So far there were no signs of hostile life. No predators, hopefully.

"Daddy."

"What?"

"I can't pee here," Beth said. Her voice rose to a high-pitched whine.

"Beth, w-w-what the hell is the matter, Beth? It's just outside. Just pick a spot and piss outside."

"Daddy-"

"What?! Just go fucking pee, Beth! Go fucking pee, go stand over there."

Beth's lower lip trembled. A big fat tear trickled down her face, and a thin puddle of urine trickled on the forest floor.

"Oh fuck," Rick said, and Beth started crying.

"Daddy I peed myself," Beth said. Rick punched the console.

"Fuck!"

Beth shrank back, crying and sniffing. Rick paced, then took a breath.

"Sweetie, I-I'm sorry. I'm sorry. Daddy didn't mean to yell, okay? Daddy's just tired."

Beth sniffed again. Her face was blotchy and red.

"O-okay. Let's just...let's just clean you up." Rick led her away from the puddle and knelt down, undoing the buttons to her pants.

"Daddy?"

"Yeah?"

"I'm hungry, Daddy." She spoke in a little voice, as if she were afraid he would yell at her again.

Rick sighed. "Okay, sweetie. Just a second."

Underwear. Pants. Rick tossed the soiled clothes to the side, then buttoned the lab coat around her again.

"Daddy?"

"Yeah?"

"Are you gonna wash them, Daddy?" Beth was swimming in his lab coat. Rick's eyes widened.

"Fuck," Rick said, realizing.

They didn't have any drinkable water.

xXx

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On Earth, other four-year-olds were in preschool, cutting out paper shapes from construction paper and gluing macaroni together.

On a no-name backwater alien planet, Rick's four-year-old was playing with a disassembled ray gun while Rick scrounged around for water.

He opened the engine to the ship. They could drink the nano water, but if they used it up, they wouldn't be able to fly later.

Fucking bullshit. He didn't want to drag his four-year-old daughter into some unknown woods, looking for a water source which was alien and could potentially kill her.

"Daddy, look." Beth held up the ray gun triumphantly.

"Oh shit." Rick held up his hands, crouching toward her. "Sweetie, put it down, okay? Daddy didn't know you could put that together. Sweetie don't do that," Rick said, his voice rising as Beth bought the barrel of the gun to the front of her face. "Sweetie, put it down, point it away from you. Sweetie-"

Beth pulled the trigger, and the ray gun discharged, making her shriek. Rick had ducked, barely missing the laser.

"O-okay, sweetie." He grabbed the ray gun. "That one's on me. I-I shouldn't have let a four-year-old play with a fucking laser." He disarmed the ray gun and stuffed it in his holster.

He made a makeshift filter using his shirt, which was stretched and taped over the mouth of the jug. The water dribbled slowly, brackish and dirty from the engine oil and other chemicals mixed in with it. Thank god Rick didn't use antifreeze - those chemicals were bullshit, and were a surefire way of getting poisoned.

Rick held up a dirty cup of brackish water, helping Beth to drink. Her skin was smudged and dirty, and her fine blonde hair was sticking to her face.

They ate more clone steaks. Rick gingerly flexed his arm, rubbing the bandage around his bicep. Every time he cloned a steak, he had to take a hole-punch biopsy of the muscle, and there was a chance each wound would get infected. Rick winced, cleaning the wound with the liquor from his flask.

He wrapped his arm up with old bandages, and tried to ignore how dark splotches of blood started to ooze through the fabric.

xXx

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"Daddy?"

"Yeah?" Rick was on his back, trying to fix the torn out pieces of engine dangling beneath his ship.

"When are we gonna see Mommy?" Beth played with the sleeves of his lab coat.

"I-I don't know, sweetie. We have to get off this planet, first."

"But I miss Mommy," Beth said. "Do you miss Mommy, Daddy?"

"Huh?" Rick glanced back sharply, before realizing. "Oh. No. I-I mean, not really."

Beth looked confused at that.

"Sweetie, i-i-it's just an irrational attachment. It's just a mating strategy to protect your offspring."

She looked even more confused at that.

"Sweetie, when two, two animals mate, they do so to further their genetic legacy. Only the fittest survive, sweetie. And humans are very unfit, very weak animals. We had to adapt by living in packs. But humans are smarter now, and we don't need to hunt in packs. And your Daddy's a genius, sweetie, he doesn't need another parent to help take care of you."

"So you don't miss Mommy, Daddy?" Beth said.

"I-I mean, technically speaking, sweetie, Mommy already reproduced, so from an evolutionary perspective, we don't really need her."

"But you don't miss Mommy, Daddy?" Beth asked again.

Rick snapped, "W-w-what's with the twenty questions, Beth? I already told you, no, I don't miss your Mommy. I'm too fucking busy."

Her lower lip trembled.

"Goddammit." Rick threw down his wrench and scooted out from under the ship. "Beth. Stop crying. You're pissing me off and you're being annoying."

Little Beth hiccuped, tears rolling down her face pathetically.

"Goddammit, Beth! W-w-w-what do you have to be crying about?! I'm fucking feeding you my arm, Beth! You pissed on my lab coat! I can't concentrate with you fucking crying, Beth! Do you know how much easier it would be, if you fucking weren't with me?!"

"Sorry, Daddy." Beth's voice was thick from crying.

Silence. Above them, the wind rustle through the trees, and there was nothing but the sound of his preschool-aged daughter sniffing and crying softly.

Rick stooped down and picked up his wrench. There was another panel that needed fixing.

xXx

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"Sweetie?"

Beth looked up at Rick with puffy eyes.

"I-I'm sorry for yelling, sweetie."

She burrowed her face into his neck, throwing her little arms around him.

xXx

.

She slept in the cockpit again, her tiny body warmly curled up against his lap.

He was a piece of shit. Silently, Rick took a small sip from his flask, then let his hand rest flat against her back. The lab coat was dirty and grimy, but he could still feel the soft baby fat just beneath the coarse fabric.

The beacon flashed. They had been stranded for three days with no signs of help coming. Rick's eyes felt dry and gritty from not sleeping, and in the rearview mirror he could see how his sclera were injected with fine red lines.

They could make food indefinitely, but soon they would be running out of water.

xXx

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"Daddy, what are you doing?" Beth was wearing her underwear and pants again, the urine having already dried.

"I'm making a portal gun." Rick squinted at the machine parts. "The gun is easy, sweetie, I-I have all the stuff right here. The problem is the portal fluid." Rick screwed on a top piece, then turned the gun over in his hands. "Portal fluid requires precision and I don't have the equipment, so right now I have to fuckin' eyeball it."

The liquid glowed, the green light pulsing slightly from the thin liquid. Rick loaded the portal gun and shot an experimental portal, then tossed a stick into the center of the green.

It sparked, then blackened, the stick frying from the liquid. Rick sighed and made a mental note of how much to adjust the components.

"Daddy?"

"Hm?"

"I'm bored, Daddy." Beth kicked a metal panel lying beside the ship.

"Sweetie, I-I-I don't have time to worry about you being bored, okay, I'm trying to make a way to get us out of here."

From the corner of his eye, Rick watched as Beth wandered around the periphery. She picked up a few sticks, scratching the dirt with the pointed ends, then squatted on the ground and started picking up leaves. She started lifting them up like dolls.

"Hello, I'm Mr. Leaf," Beth said, in a singsong voice. "Hello, I'm Mr. Doll. Hi Mr. Doll, I'm a leaf. Did you know I'm a leaf? Yes. I know you're a leaf. You are una hoja. Do you know the parts of la hoja, Mr. Doll? I do..."

Rick's mind drifted. He scratched down the approximate measurements of his last attempt at portal fluid, writing with a chewed down pencil, when he overheard Beth talking.

"Mr. Doll, you're a fucking asshole. No you're a fucking asshole, Señor Hoja! ¡No me chingues, vete a la chingada! Don't fuck with me, go fuck yourself!"

"Oh, shit," Rick said, and he looked over.

"Beth?"

"Yes, Daddy?"

"Don't say those words in front of Mommy, Mommy'll kick my ass." Rick considered. "Y-you can say that stuff in Spanish, though."

"Okay, Daddy!"

Rick smirked and went back to his calculations. He adjusted the portal fluid.

It was getting dark. Rick stood, ready to collect his errant daughter and punch another hole in his arm for dinner, when the proximity alarm in his ship started going off.

"What the fuck?" Rick ran over to the cockpit, where the alarm was blaring.

"_Warning. Federation heat signature detected. Warning. Federation heat signature detected._"

"Oh, fuck! Beth!" Rick ran over to Beth, who was still playing with her sticks and leaves. "Beth, get up, get over here. W-w-we gotta get back in the ship, Beth, we gotta get out of here!"

"Daddy?" Rick yanked her by the arm and ran toward the ship. "Daddy, what's happening, Daddy?"

An explosion. Rick slammed hard against the ground, Beth screaming as he shielded her with his body. "Daddy! Daddy!"

Rick yanked her to her feet, "Come on!"

The Gromflomites were surrounding them. They lurched into the ship, just barely missing the laser fire ricocheting against the metal. He slammed the door shut, flipping on the thrusters.

"Daddy! What's going on, Daddy?!" Beth shrieked. The ship surged upwards. Gromflomites behind him gave chase, lasers shooting around them.

"Beth just shut up a minute!" Rick said. Cannons exploded, the ship's alarms blaring. He wrenched the steering wheel doing evasive maneuvers. "Aggh! Shut up!" He banged his hand on the console, turning off the alarm.

Gromflomites were on his tail. His ship was still wrecked to hell and he didn't have any more concentrated dark matter, but if he could make it to orbit he could try to lose them in the ionic density fields, use the low-lying clouds to scatter his heat signature.

Another alarm started going off.

"_Warning. Structural integrity at sixty percent. Warning. Structural integrity at sixty percent..._"

"Goddammit, are you kidding me?!" Rick said, and he banged the warning indicator on the dashboard.

The ship rattled. He could see the clouds breaking, the stars getting closer as they rocketed closer to orbit...

Space cannons ripped through the atmosphere, slamming into the ship. Beth screamed, the ship whiplashing forward.

"Beth, get down!" Rick said, and behind them lasers fired, a Federation cruiser speeding close behind them...

And then the ship lurched violently, a space cannon tearing through the ship's side.

All the indicator alarms were going off. The ship spiraled downwards, Beth screaming. Rick pulled up on the steering wheel, the thrusters sputtering behind them.

"Beth! We're gonna crash! Hold on!"

Impact. The ship slammed into the earth, shattering into pieces. It skidded and like a stone skipping through water, pieces of ship flying off with each impact.

Fire. It crackled around them, the orange flames lighting up the inside of the cockpit. Rick was draped over the steering column, dazed from the impact, a thin trickle of blood flowing down his temple.

The Gromflomites were just outside. Vaguely Rick could hear them talking, could hear the slight catch of metal sliding over metal as they readied their guns.

The fire crackled loudly, and blindly Rick groped his hand beneath his seat, reaching for the ray gun that was still lying in its holster.

He kicked open the door. Shots fired. The Gromflomites shot at him but he was quicker. Lasers ripped through their buggy flesh and splattered their green innards onto the forest floor.

Patrol bugs. Not their elite by a longshot. They probably came across his heat signature by coincidence, or may have even intercepted his distress beacon.

"Fuck," Rick said. He dropped his pistol.

Rick was dizzy, and the fumes from the smoke were making him lightheaded. Whatever adrenaline that had propelled him forward had dissipated, and he staggered back toward the ship, which was surrounded by orange flames.

"Beth?" Rick hefted himself into the cockpit. "Beth, are you okay, Beth? Beth-"

Rick's eyes widened.

Beth's little body was impaled from a metal shard that had ripped through the ship's side door.

"No, no, no, Beth, no..."

Beth's eyes were wide. Blood poured out from the wound through her shirt.

"Fuck!" Rick said, and he rushed over. She was guppy breathing and her skin was clammy.

"Daddy?" Beth's voice was thin. Thready. "Daddy...it hurts, Daddy."

"I-it's okay, it's okay, we'll just...fuck. We'll just, we'll find something...I'll figure something out, Beth, I-I'm a genius, we'll figure something out-"

"I'm cold Daddy."

"No, no, no, sweetie, you're not cold, sweetie don't say that, you're not...you're not cold."

"I'm cold, Daddy," Beth said again, and her eyes lost their focus.

"Beth?" Rick shook her. "Beth?! Fuck! Beth!"

He hefted her from her seat, pushed a shaking hand to her neck to fumble for a pulse.

"Oh fuck no, Beth, Jesus, no...

"Beth!" He pulled out the spike and started compressions. "Beth! Don't fucking do this to me, Beth!" He was a genius, he knew compressions don't mean shit if you're bleeding to death.

Her eyes were still open. Her once warm skin was growing cold.

There was portal fluid in his trunk. It was still untested, but it might be enough. Shoving on his interdimensional goggles, his fingers clacked desperately on the keyboard.

It could work. It could still work. And if it didn't, he'd just fry to death. He didn't give a fuck if it didn't work.

xXx

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"Daddy?!"

Beth was shaking her father's body, screaming. Fire raged behind her as a thin trickle of blood dripped from her temple. "Daddy?! Wake up! Daddy!" Around her were the bodies of dead Federation soldiers he had managed to kill before he died.

There was a sound, then a sudden green glow, opening above her.

"Beth?" someone said.

Beth looked up. Her eyes were red and puffy, and her skin was dirty and tear-streaked. She still had wisps of baby fat clinging to her cheeks.

"Daddy?"

Her Daddy was standing in front of the green light, covered in blood and red puffy eyes like he had been crying. Beth looked down, blinking at the body that was lying in her lap, then looked up again at her Daddy, standing in front of her.

"Daddy!" she cried, and her Daddy rushed over, stepping over the dead Rick lying in the cockpit and lurching toward her.

"I-i-it's okay, Beth, it's okay," he said, and his voice broke. She felt him he hold her tighter. "Daddy's here, Beth. Everything is gonna be okay."

Rick wrapped his arms around her, pulling her out of the ship. Beth cried into his shirt, not understanding that her real father was lying dead in the rubble behind her.

xXx

.

In the end, everything was fucked.

It didn't matter. His Beth was dead, and this Beth needed a father.

Silently Rick watched as she stirred in her sleep. The fire had died down, and only smoldering embers remained, his counterpart's body charred to bits and turned into so much ash.

"Daddy, I'm cold," Beth said, and wordlessly Rick picked her up and held her against his chest.

His real Beth was dead. He tried not to think about it. She burrowed her face into his armpit, and he placed his palm against her back, drifting to sleep as he felt her breathe.

xXx

.

The sun rose, and a rectangle of yellow light filtered through the broken window. Rick squinted and opened his eyes, feeling his daughter's arms tighten around his ribs as he shifted.

There was no way he could make more portal fluid. Not with his ship all banged up to hell. The clone compiler was also ruined. They would die if they didn't get help.

The ray gun was lying on the passenger seat, illuminated by a column of sunlight. He could see the thin motes of dust drifting above it. It was the most painfully beautiful thing he had ever seen.

It would be quick, Rick thought. She was sleeping on his lap. A clean shot to the temple before he'd turn the gun on himself. It would be better than starving to death.

A tear dripped, and then another, small dots of water spreading into the fabric of their makeshift blanket. Rick squeezed his eyes and hunched over, crying noiselessly as he held the gun against his daughter.

xXx

.

In this universe, the fucking ray gun was fucking broken.

No fucking wonder her fucking Rick had died.

xXx

.

The light from the indicator kept going off, and the computer alarm was continuously beeping. Beth and Rick were lying weakly in the cockpit, listless after days of not eating and dangerously dehydrated. Bird Person walked out from his ship and rapped his knuckles against the door.

Rick's eyes cracked open. His lips were chapped from being dehydrated.

"Rick. I see you're with your daughter. I take it you're in need of assistance."

Rick coughed, weakly.

"Yeah, Bird Person, no shit. It took you long enough. Don't fucking wake her."

xXx

.

Beth loved it on Bird World. Rick watched as she ran around the courtyard, squealing as the other Bird People flapped their wings around her. Playing with the Bird People made Beth exhausted, and when they took her inside, her eyes kept closing lethargically as she sat down on the couch.

"Where is your wife?" Bird Person asked, not turning, because he could sense that Rick was standing at the door behind him.

"I don't know," Rick said. "She might have been caught by the Federation."

They fell silent, watching as little Beth breathed in her sleep.

"Can you take her?" Rick asked. Bird Person turned his head. "I need to go back. I need to make sure they don't get Diane."

Bird Person nodded. Carefully, Rick stepped forward and gingerly lifted her from the couch.

Beth stirred. "Daddy?"

"Shh, sweetie. Go back to sleep. Uncle Bird Person is gonna watch you."

"Okay, Daddy." Beth's little eyes closed again.

Rick watched as Bird Person put her to sleep. Beth was curled up on her side, her little body cuddled up like a rolled up pill bug as Bird Person tucked her under the covers. She breathed deeply and her eyelids fluttered, her chest rising with each little breath. Hesitantly, Rick touched the side of her head, stroking the fine hair with the tips of his fingers, and tried to ignore the warmth behind his eyes.

"Rick," Bird Person said, and Rick straightened.

"Thanks again, Bird Person," Rick said. Bird Person nodded.

"There is a saying among my people. Knocka knocka do ra ra. Cherish the ones who are your lack of cats. Good luck with your wife. I will see you soon."


End file.
